A clock chip is the gate for a service interface into the system. The service interface sends commands to the clock chip and the clock chip provides the status of the entire system to the service element. The service interface consists of a service element (SE) which connects to a flexible service processor (FSP) via an Ethernet connection and the FSP connects to the clock chip via a proprietary interface. For reliability reasons there are two FSPs connected to the clock chip via two independent interfaces, but only one FSP may be active at a time, the other is in standby mode.